The Securities and Exchange Commission ("Commission") announced today that that the Honorable Clarence Cooper, United States District Judge for the Northern District of Georgia, entered a Final Judgment as to Defendant Geoffrey A.Gish ("Gish"), restraining and enjoining him from future violations of Sections 5(a), 5(c) and 17(a) of the Securities Act of 1933, Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b-5 thereunder. The judgment further restrained Gish from violating, or aiding and abetting violations of, Sections 206(1) and 206(2) of the Investment Advisers Act of 1940. Gish consented to the entry of the judgment without admitting or denying any of the allegations of the Commission's Complaint. Further, the Court ordered disgorgement against Gish in the amount of $1,258,836, plus prejudgment interest of $41,276. Gish was also ordered to pay a civil penalty of $120,000.

The Commission's Complaint, filed May 17, 2006, alleged that from February 2004 through the present, Gish and the four defendant entities that he controlled fraudulently sold at least $8.8 million of securities to more than 100 investors. Gish offered the securities, in part, through Weston Rutledge Financial Services, Inc. ("Weston Rutledge"), an investment advisory firm that he formed and controlled. According to the Complaint, at least $8.7 million of the money received from investors went into a fraudulent investment program of Zamindari Capital, LLC ("Zamindari"). The balance of the investor funds went into the fraudulent investment programs of Lexington International Fund, LLC a/k/a Lexington International Fund, Inc. ("Lexington") and Oxford Adams Capital, LLC ("Oxford Adams"). Gish was alleged to have operated the investment programs as a Ponzi scheme.

The Complaint alleged that Gish commingled funds from the three investment entities, and that Gish and the co-defendant entities that he controlled made numerous false statements regarding the use of the investment funds, the historical rates of return of the investments, and the risk to the investors. The Zamindari offering documents claimed, among other things, that the investor funds would be used to purchase debt instruments issued by a major bank or corporation. The Lexington offering documents claimed that Lexington traded foreign currency contracts. The Oxford Adams offering documents claimed that the entity was an options trading program. All three investment programs, however, were alleged to have been fictitious "prime bank" schemes.

The Complaint alleged that Zamindari, Lexington, and Oxford lured investors with offering materials that falsely suggested that each program had historically generated returns ranging between 44% to over 100% per year. The Complaint further alleged that since November 2005 Gish diverted approximately $100,000 from Zamindari investors to his personal bank account and at least $100,000 to the Weston Rutledge bank account, and that Gish used those funds to pay miscellaneous personal and other expenses. Gish and Weston Rutledge were also alleged to have sent false account statements to investors, misrepresenting that their investments in Zamindari, Lexington, and Oxford Adams had appreciated substantially.